Digging Up Dinosaurs
"Digging Up Dinosaurs" is Episode 6 in Season 1. It originally aired on June 13, 1983. Synopsis The episode begins with LeVar watching a dinosaur movie with some others. There's nothing that he likes than a good movie to get his imagination going. As far as he can remember, he always loved dinosaurs. He used to dream of going back to the time when they were still around so he could see them up close. Coming face to face with one is no joke, unless he had an excellent sense of humor. A cartoon stand up dinosaur comedian tells some funny jokes about them. LeVar says that wherever he walks, there used to be dinosaurs millions of years ago. He feels pretty small when he stands next to a big dinosaur-like machine. It kind of gives him an idea to know what it was like to see such huge creatures. At many construction sites, machines can dig up dinosaur fossils that have been buried for millions of years. LeVar states that dinosaur bones are stored in exciting places like museums. There are lots of things to see and hear there. Looking at dinosaurs can give you an idea of how they were like many, many, many years before we existed. We learn how certain ones are related to many familiar animals that we know today. After reading about dinosaurs and learning about their relatives, it's time to go hunting for dinosaur bones. LeVar has all the tools he needs for doing so. He heads for Dinosaur National Monument in Utah. Many dinosaurs made their homes around that area 140 million years ago, but all that's left of them now are their fossils. It's the only place in the whole world where you can see how nature has preserved dinosaur bones. Linda, one of the park rangers, introduces LeVar to a paleontologist (a person who digs up dinosaur bones). He is working on a dinosaur skeleton. The people of the monument keep track of all the bones they uncover. The paleontologist uses tools to chip away some of the rock from around the bone, but not before taking it out itself so it could be identified. In a special lab, the uncovered bones are taken to be worked on building the dinosaur's skeleton. LeVar is mostly curious about how all these bones got there. It could be that a river got to the monument and carried off some of the bones when it overflowed until they went into shallow places. They are left in a wall so that people everywhere can see them. Even though we have been digging up their bones, we still don't know exactly what dinosaurs were really like. LeVar wonders how come dinosaurs just vanished. In comparison with how long they were around, humans have only lived on Earth for a short period of time. The clues to the mystery are still being dug up from under the ground. We stand on layers of time periods. If you dig down one layer, you could find lots of interesting treasure from long ago. Time capsules help people in the future figure out what ones from long ago were like. LeVar asks the viewers what they would put in one to show how they were like. Different kids say so. LeVar puts some things of his own in one, including some house keys, a photograph of himself, an aerosol spray can, and a copy of his favorite book. He hopes those clues will help futuristic people figure out what we were like and if they'd care. Before the closing credits roll, the dinosaur comedian has one more joke to tell. He thinks that they got extinct because they died laughing. Review Books *Dinosaurs! A Drawing Book *If You Were a Hunter of Fossils *Dinosaur Time Highlighted Book *Tyrannosaurus Wrecks: A Book of Dinosaur Riddles Category:Season 1 Category:Episodes